The number of services available over the internet grows every day. The most noticeable of these services are aimed at consumers—web search, maps, hosted documents and spreadsheet, location-based services, and the like.
Less noticed are web-based services that are available for businesses. One prominent service is on-line targeted advertising, where a business can submit ad copy, some targeting keywords, and a bid, and can have its ads shown to web users in situations where the keywords are relevant. This form of advertising can be very simple, with a small business logging in and running a handful of ads. It can also be extremely complex, with large ad agencies or advertisers running hundreds of campaigns with thousands of ads, selecting particular web sites to run their ads, and fine-tuning a number of parameters to maximize the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.
Certain companies generate data as part of their operations and certain other companies may desire access to that data. For example, an automotive web site may be able to generate data that indicates which of its visitors are likely to buy a car in the next six months. This information—that the consumer is actually ready to spend, and not just window shopping—can be incredibly valuable to a seller of automobiles. It can in turn be valuable to a company, such as an on-line publisher, that sells ad space to sellers of automobiles. For example, an on-line newspaper could promise an auto maker that the publisher will show its ads only to people ready to purchase an automobile, and can charge an extra amount for that service. Likewise, the publisher could get from the automotive website information about whether a consumer is interested in big cars or small cars, and the publisher could target ads appropriately.